Buddha in a buddy's garden.
Mindfulness can help you get back to the present - which is just about the best and only place to be. What's more, it can help you reclaim an inner healthy state of being you already possess.
The intention of this blog is to muse upon what is essentially a quest. Our mentors will be exercises, experiences, practices, and musings upon the wise words of teachers, influencers, and practitioners - all of which will help you find a mindfulness practice that makes sense for you in your busy, bustling, and oftentimes bewildering life.
Let's start with a short practice, just to give you an experiential sense of what mindfulness is about. Then, after you've experienced it, maybe consider whether what you experienced is somehow familiar, somehow something you already know. Somehow something you feel you can come home to.
There is more right with you than wrong with you
At my first mindfulness class, I was told ... from our point of view, as long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what the challenges you are facing. Challenges and difficulties are workable.
This is where we start - by reframing challenge and difficulty as something we already know as workable. Of course, it won't seem that way in the full throes of what's unfolding, but the more you work with it the more it can make sense. For instance, sometimes it just helps to repeat phrases like ...
there is more right with this situation than wrong with this situation
there is more right with me than wrong with me
there is more right with this person than wrong with this person
Try it. Try it when you think you might need it today. Try it with the small stuff. Try it as the unfolding moment you don't want to unfold starts unfolding today.
It's an observable and felt truth. What's more, it's enlightening - even liberating - to know that the only thing stopping this workable reframe is your tricky mind. This is what mindfulness teaches us: that we have a tricky, sticky, storytelling mind. The neuroscientist, Rick Hanson, puts it like this ... your mind is like Velcro for bad thoughts and Teflon for good thoughts.
Being ‘already mindful’ means recognizing the tenacious velcro-ness of your negativity when it starts to arise, then finding the capacity within yourself to pause, befriend, and feel your way towards a wiser response.
Thanks for showing up. I know your attention is important to you. I'm grateful you placed it here.
I'd love to invite you to subscribe so I can send you a free newsletter that can help support you reclaim the mindful life that has always been yours.
Meantime, stay well … and be who you already are
Warm wishes,
Chris